1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to cloud based data storage. In particular, embodiments of the present invention relate to systems and methods for use of vendor independent secure cloud storage distribution and aggregation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computing devices have traditionally executed applications and data services locally on respective devices, in which, as the data is accessed, processed, stored, cached, etc., it may travel within the devices over local buses, interfaces and other data pathways. As a result, users of such devices did not have to worry about interference or exposure of user data unless the device itself was lost or stolen. However, with the growing amount of data that is generated and with the evolution of online/Internet based services and cloud storage platforms, applications, content, and services are increasingly being moved to network providers who perform some or all of a given service on behalf of a user's devices. In such cases, a user may become concerned with who can access, or potentially worse, interfere with, the user's data while it is uploaded to a service, while it is stored by the service, or while it is retrieved from the service.
It has been recognized that while existing cloud storage providers offer a virtually infinite storage capacity, data owners seek geographical and provider diversity in data placement so that they are not tied to a particular service provider and have the flexibility to switch to another provider without losing data or making significant efforts in data transition. Moreover, with the increasing criticality of data being stored, expectations of users to have more reliable mechanisms in place to ensure availability and durability of the content are also on the rise. On similar lines, instead of storing data within a single cloud, it may also be desired by users to store data across multiple cloud platforms to ensure more security, redundancy, and reduction in potential threat of data compromise.
Furthermore, storage of data in an unencrypted format is always at the risk of a network attack that may lead to the data being compromised. Storage of encrypted data, on the other hand, using existing technologies, makes the files, folders, filenames, and content thereof unsearchable and hence unfriendly for user access. Existing encryption techniques also expose the encrypted content to frequency analysis attacks. Moreover, since the could providers control the encryption keys, the data in the cloud can be exposed to attack within the cloud, insider jobs and subpoena—all without the knowledge or consent of the data owner.
Existing techniques for managing distribution and aggregation of content stored by a cloud provider also necessitate service provider and/or vendor specific application programming interfaces (APIs) to be incorporated for storage, access, and processing of the content, making present systems rigid and non-flexible to implementation of policies that allow storage of data across different service providers, allow different cloud storage access rights across users and computing devices, allow searching of downloaded encrypted data across cloud service vendors, among other desired activities.